Social media anxiety disorder - the hidden source of depression
In the past month I more or less disappeared not just from the blog itself but from the reality too. I was looking for the reason what’s happened to me, suddenly in the past month felt a bit underwhelmed with my life, where I am going with my life, it can’t be midlife crisis, cause I’m too young for it I believe so, I kept on looking. I started to observe myself and write notes what am I doing on daily basis, why do I feel a bit empty, why I have this “don’t care” attitude and why the time just started to fly and days went by so quick like never before.
Everyday in the past month I was just browsing more and more on social media, namely on instagram and reddit and of course watching random videos on youtube. I kind of gave up on my routine readings and became really unproductive. My days looked like pretty much waking up, working, browsing on social media and did not engage much in social life, had couple of beers on some days and was contemplating about life, was day-dreaming and it’s not something unusual to me but I couldn’t sleep properly most nights, thought it must be because of the insane amount of caffein I incorporated into my diet, namely minimum daily one double espresso, of course no sugar, no milk and one big mug of Americano made with a traditional mocha maker, no sugar, no milk, but then again I was thinking It’s not something unusual to me, cause that’s my daily dose of coffee that even up to today blame it on my university, before uni I did not drink coffee at all but back then I hooked upon it. So to cut this story short, I decreased my coffee consumption but nothing changed even after couple of days, so it can’t be because of it.
I was just like in a kind of zombie mood and layed in my bed with my cell phone in my hand browsing reddit and looking at beautiful watches and thinking how could I obtain one of those luxurious precious timekeepers and how cool I would look like wearing one of them. It’s already 2 AM so it’s time to look for the newest football signing news, checking for random beautiful goals scored in one of the top leagues, reading some interviews made with my favourite team’s players/coaches. Gosh, can’t believe it’s already 3AM and guess what; reading some random political news, the information just keep on flowing and I feel I can’t get enough, now’s it’s time to read some economical studies about inequality, potential tax changes, 4AM and I feel tired my eyes can’t keep on looking this tiny phone no more, but still on reading about the effects of the pandemic, what the new economical environment will hold for the companies, how different sectors will react to it.
I am feeling tired and almost 5AM when finally hitting the bed flat, woke up couple of hours later, super tired, need my coffee, need some quality sleep but it has to wait, after work and the second coffee in a good case, don’t feel sleepy no more, but the procastination does not seem like it will disappear and just keep on doing some random things without having a definite plan and feeling depleted. Imagine living more than a month in this state and slowly morphing into a zombie. It sucks, hope you can get the idea just from reading it, cause it really does.
Just couple of days ago in one of this random readabout times, I read a study about something called “Social Media Anxiety Disorder” - SMAD - guess where, on a social media platform it came across me than I went to explore more this topic by reading a scientific paper here.
The scientific papers about SMAD reached the conclusions that social media use was assosiciated with dispositional anxiety. I felt that it makes sense thinking about it logically, the more I read about this topic, the more it made sense to me.
In the US for example Social Anxiety Disorder is the third largest psychological disorder after alcoholism and depression with its 13-14% of the population, in the UK it stands at around 10%. It’s a scary level to be quiet frank about it, social media just added fuel to the fire to this. As an Apple user since few months now, I also receive a weekly report about my phone use/screen use and the substanstial increase on week on week basis just made me even more sad but at least it’s highlighted the issue for me even more.
The faceless enemy has been identified.
SMAD includes the symptoms of the constant need to check your phone when engaging in real life conversation, the constant need of posting on social media, spending 8 hours or more on social media sites, randomly adding people on your social media platform without knowing them, like hunting, judging yourself based on your status on social media.
Thanks to internet we are more connected than ever but more far than ever before from each other.
The paradox for me was the silent version of social media participation on my end, I spend/spent multiple hours on social media yet did not post, did not make stories, did not participate in a proactive way, instead observed and handled it on a passive way. I felt drained and deplated by the overflowing information and because of the need of being informed and up to date.
That was the honest reason for my disappearance, I need to focus a little bit on myself and on the real life relationships with people among me. Social media is a dangerous way to engage in conversations, most people are sucked into this virtual reality and I am no exception because these platforms are allowing people to engage more openly and freely than they might could do that in real life, it includes; them being more aggressive, rude or utterly abusive eg; trolls. Social media can be also more intense than real life discussions, social media can also offer more support which did not exist before.
We are more connected than ever before yet more far away from each other in every sense.
The only way to tackle a problem is to identify it first that we have one, I am at this stage, I gave a face to a faceless enemy so I can fight it now.
Social media is for sure is minimalist too, cause the less is more.
Your sincerely
To/Minimal
